Community Impact
In any impoverished area, void of healthy foods, good schools and jobs, there is usually easier access to a liquor store and illegal drugs than anything else. Living in Baltimore Maryland currently, and having moved form a small town in Connecticut has helped build my perspective as well outlook on this issue.
I remember a few years back working for a meat sales company located outside of Baltimore, and some days as I would drive into the city of Baltimore to sell meat, there would be children 11 or 12 years of age, running up to our van, trying to sell the little amount of drugs they had. I've met people my age who started selling drugs at about 7 or 8 years old, people who've seen things I couldn't explain, but resilient and persistent enough to live to share the story.
One of those days, as I was selling meats in the city. I heard about 3-4 gunshots go off a block away from me, however at the time it didn't surprise me. Some of the best clients were drug dealers, because they were some of the few people who could afford our product.
However Communities that are filled with drugs and alcohol to cope with the depression of non productive behavior, (due to the lack of jobs), normally breeds envy, strife and bitterness, as well crime.
When our inner city black communities all over America are dealing with the same issues, I can assume we'll be able to find a common solution, until then, we'll have to identify the reality that change happening in our communities, first has to happen with you.
How Do We Implement The Gift of Grace?
1. Define Grace.
* Grace is God's favor towards man
* It is His Unmerited, Divine, Assistance
Romans 11:5-6 - ( So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; Otherwise grace would no longer be grace.)
2. Grace Is A Gift.
* Grace gives us eternal comfort and good hope
* Grace gives us victory over sin
Romans 3:23 - ( For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.)
3. Implement Grace.
*Forgiveness
(Luke 7), "Those forgiven much love much"
*Right Standing With God
( 2 Corinthians 5:19), For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
How To Find Right Standing With God in A Godless Environment?
1. * Know Yourself
- Knowing your strengths and weaknesses
- Accepting your limitations, and knowing God's unlimited abilities.
- Understand who God says you are (Genesis 1:26) ' You are created in the image and likeness of God'
2. Know Your 'Real' Enemy
- (Ephesians 6:12) ' For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places'. Your battle is not between your brother, but the principality that makes you 'Think' your battle is between you and your brother.
- The real enemy is deceitful (Mathew 6.12) 'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. '
_ The real enemy does not come looking as a beast, but comes as soft and subtle as the serpent (Gen 3.1) "Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You can't eat from any tree in the garden'?"
3. Know Your Enviornment
- (1 John 4:1) "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
- Adapting to circumstance and flux
- Circumstance meaning "Where you are"
- Flux meaning "Who you're with"
- I.E your circumstance and flux is different in a church than in a club.
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